IT NEWS

Threat actors have rediscovered an old and little-used feature of web URLs, the innocuous @ symbol we usually see in email addresses, and started using it to obscure links to their malicious websites.

Researchers from Perception Point noticed it being used in a cyberattack against multiple organization recently. While the attackers are still unknown, Perception Point traced them to an IP in Japan.

The attack started with a phishing email pretending to be from Microsoft, claiming the user has messages that have been embargoed as potential spam. (Using familiar, transactional messages from well-known brands like Microsoft has become a popular tactic for scammers, as a way to defeat spam filters and keen-eyed users.)

The message reads:

You have new 5 held messages.

You can release all of your held messages and permit or block future emails the senders, or manage messages individually.

If the recipient clicks any of the links in the email, they are directed to a phishing page made to look like an Outlook login page.

If the recipient follows the often-repeated advice to hover their pointer over the links before clicking them, to see where they go, they will see this weird-looking URL, and probably be none the wiser:

https://$%^&;****((@bit.ly/3vzLjtz#ZmluYW5jZUBuZ3BjYXAuY29t

This is almost certainly designed to bamboozle users, but to your computer it looks fine. As weird as this URL appears, it is actually valid and acceptable, and your browser will happily parse it for you.

Users who clicked on the link were passed through a chain of redirects before ending up at a phishing page that looks like the Outlook login screen.

Reading the URL

As weird as it looks, the URL in this phishing campaign sticks to the rules of what’s allowed in a web address. The part you see least often is the @ symbol. RFC 3986 refers to anything after https:// and before the @ symobl, highlighted below, as userinfo. This part of the URL is for passing authentication information like a username and password, but it is very rarely used, and is simply ignored as a so-called “opaque string” by many systems.

https://$%^&;****((@bit.ly/3vzLjtz#ZmluYW5jZUBuZ3BjYXAuY29t

The last part of the URL after the # is also ignored when you click the link. This is called the fragment identifier and it represents a piece of the destination page. The browser might use it to scroll to a section of the destination page, or it might be used to pass information to the destination page, but it plays no part in determining what the destination actually is.

https://bit.ly/3vzLjtz#ZmluYW5jZUBuZ3BjYXAuY29t

In this case the fragment ID—ZmluYW5jZUBuZ3BjYXAuY29t—appears to be a unique ID that identifies the email address the phish was sent to. If it’s removed, the link works but when you reach the final destination it simply shows a loading icon, perhaps to hide the site’s true intentions to accidental visitors or researchers.

What we are left with when we remove the parts that of the link that are ignored by the browser is a very ordinary-looking bit.ly link. Exactly the kind of thing you might think is suspicious in an email that says it’s from Microsoft.

https://bit.ly/3vzLjtz

As you probably know, bit.ly is a URL shortening service. The bit.ly link redirects users to another URL, likely used for tracking, which itself redirects users to the phishing page.

Does your browser support the @ symbol?

If you are one of the 2.6 billion people using Chrome, the answer is “yes”, URLs that use the @ symbol work in Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers such as Vivaldi, Brave, and Microsoft Edge.

The latest version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer doesn’t parse URLs with the @ delimiter though.

Firefox and Firefox-based browsers, such as Tor and Pale Moon, are also affected.

And what about Safari?

According to Thomas Reed, Malwarebytes’ Director of Mac and Mobile, “This technique appears to work in Safari and all other major Mac browsers. Firefox will show a warning when attempting to visit such a link. Unfortunately, Safari—the most popular browser on macOS—does not display a warning and opens the link without objection, as does Chrome.”

Reed also points out that email software will often look for URLs in plain text emails and convert them to clickable links, but the @ symbol seems to prevent this. According to Reed: “The URL used by the phishing campaign does not become a clickable link by itself.” The links will still work in HTML emails, so this isn’t much of a barrier, just a feather in the cap of hold outs who insist on viewing their emails in plain text!

The wide support for the confusing and little-used @ symbol could see it used more widely. In a Threat Post interview, Perception Point’s Vice President of Customer Success and Incident Response, Motti Elloul, predicted that this won’t be the last time we’ll see phishing attacks taking advantage of it.

“The technique has the potential to catch on quickly, because it’s very easy to execute,” he said. “In order to identify the technique and avoid the fallout from it slipping past security systems, security teams need to update their detection engines in order to double check the URL structure whenever @ is included.”

The post Long lost @ symbol gets new life obscuring malicious URLs appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

A security researcher has disclosed how he chained together multiple bugs in order to take over Facebook accounts that were linked to a Gmail account.

Youssef Sammouda states it was possible to target all Facebook users but that it was more complicated to develop an exploit, and using Gmail was actually enough to demonstrate the impact of his discoveries.

Linked accounts

Linked accounts were invented to make logging in easier. You can use one account to log in to other apps, sites and services. The most commonly used is the link between Facebook and Instagram, so we will use that as an example. Log in to one account and you are also practically logged in at the other. All you need to do to access the account is confirm that the account is yours.

Since 2009, Facebook has supported myOpenID, which allows users to login to Facebook with their Gmail credentials. To put it in a simpler way, this means that if you are currently logged in to your Gmail account, the moment you visit Facebook, you will be automatically logged in.

Sandboxed CAPTCHA

The first discovery that enabled this takeover method lies in the fact that Facebook uses an extra security mechanism called “Checkpoint” to make sure that any user that logs in is who they claim to be. In some cases Checkpoint present those users with a CAPTCHA challenge to limit the number of tries.

Facebook uses Google CAPTCHA and as an extra security feature the CAPTCHA is put in an iFrame. The iFrame is hosted on a sandboxed domain (fbsbx.com) to avoid adding third-party code from Google into the main domain (facebook.com). An iFrame is a piece of HTML code that allows developers to embed another HTML page on their website.

Now, for some reason, probably for logging purposes, the URL for the iFrame includes the link to the checkpoint as a parameter.

For example, let’s say the current URL is https://www.facebook.com/checkpoint/CHECKPOINT_ID/?test=test. In that case the iframe page would be accessible through this URL: https://www.fbsbx.com/captcha/recaptcha/iframe/?referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fcheckpoint%2FCHECKPOINT_ID%2F%3Ftest%3Dtest

The attacker can replace the referrer part in the URL by changing it into a next parameter. This allows the attacker to send the URL including the login parameters to the sandbox domain. Now it is time to find a way to grab it from there, which is where cross-side-scripting (XSS) comes in.

XSS

XSS is a type of security vulnerability, and can be found in some web applications. XSS attacks enable attackers to inject client-side scripts into web pages viewed by other users. Attackers can use a cross-site scripting vulnerability to bypass access controls such as the same-origin policy.

The same-origin policy (SOP) is where a web browser permits scripts contained in a first web page to access data in a second web page, but only if both web pages have the same origin. This policy prevents a malicious script on one page from obtaining access to sensitive data on another web page.

In this case that step was easy, since Facebook allows developers to test certain features and makes it possible for them to upload custom HTML files. The creator can upload these HTML files to the fbsbx.com domain. Which, as we saw earlier, is also in use for the Google CAPTCHA. Which allows the attacker to bypass the same origin policy since the target site and the custom script are on the same domain.

CSRF

CSRF is short for cross-site request forgery. In a CSRF attack, an innocent end user is tricked by an attacker into submitting a web request that they did not intend. This may cause actions to be performed on the website that can include inadvertent client or server data leakage, change of session state, or manipulation of an end user’s account.

In his attack script, Youssef used undisclosed CRSF attacks to log the target user out and later log them back in through the Checkpoint.

OAuth

OAuth is a standard authorization protocol. It allows us to get access to protected data from an application. An OAuth Access Token is a string that the OAuth client uses to make requests to the resource server.

In this case, attackers can log out the current user and then log them back in to the attacker account which is in the Checkpoint state. But how does that allow the attacker to take over the Facebook account? By intercepting an OAuth Access Token string.

This is done by targeting a third-party OAuth provider that Facebook uses. One of these providers is Gmail. Gmail sends back the OAuth Access token to www.facebook.com for the logged in user. And since the attacker can steal the URL including the login parameters by sending them to the sandbox domain, they can intercept the OAuth Access Token string and the id_token of the user.

Takeover

Summarized, the attacker can upload a script to the Facebook sandbox and try to trick his target(s) into visiting that page by sending them the URL.

Simplified, the script will:

1. Log out the user from his current session (CSRF)
2. Send them to the Checkpoint to log back in (CSRF)
3. Open a constructed accounts.google.com URL that redirects the target to Facebook.

Once the target has visited the page with the script outlined above, the attacker can start harvesting the strings they need to take over the Facebook account.

1. The attacker waits for the victim to log in and can later extract the Google OAuth Access Token string and id_token
2. Using the email address included in the id_token they can start a password recovery process
3. Now the attacker can construct a URL to access the target account with all the data they have gathered

How to unlink accounts

Some sites will offer to log you in using your Facebook credentials. The same reasoning that is true for using the same password for every site is true for using your Facebook credentials to login at other sites. We wouldn’t recommend it because if anyone gets hold of the one password that controls them all, you’re in even bigger trouble than you would be if only one site’s password is compromised.

You can check which accounts are linked to your Facebook account by opening the Facebook settings menu. Scroll down and open Settings & Privacy, then open Settings. At the bottom on the left, use the Accounts Center button. Tap Accounts & Profiles. There you can see a list ofthe accounts linked to your Facebook account. You can remove any unwanted linked accounts there.

Facebook fix

Youssef says he reported the issue to Facebook in February. It was fixed in March and a $44,625 bounty was awarded earlier this month.

We interviewed this Youssef last year. He told us he’s submitted at least a hundred reports to Facebook which have been resolved, making Facebook a safer platform along the way.

The post Gmail-linked Facebook accounts vulnerable to attack using a chain of bugs—now fixed appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Apple has released security updates for a zero-day vulnerability that affects multiple products, including Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV.

The flaw is an out-of-bounds write issue—tracked as CVE-2022-22675—in AppleAVD, a decoder that handles specific media files.

An out-of-bounds write or read flaw makes it possible to manipulate parts of the memory which are allocated to more critical functions. This could allow an attacker to write code to a part of the memory where it will be executed with permissions that the program and user should not have.

Attackers could take control of affected devices if they exploit this flaw.

CVE-2022-22675 is the same vulnerability that affected macOS Monterey 12.3.1, iOS 15.4.1, and iPad 15.4.1. The flaw for these was patched in March.

This latest batch of updates has improved bounds checking for additional Apple products running specific operating systems, particularly macOS Big Sur 11.6.6, watchOS 8.6, and tvOS 15.5. These OSs are installed in Apple Macs running Big Sur, Apple Watch Series 3 and later, and Apple TV (4K, 4K 2nd generation, and 4K HD).

Apple says it’s aware this flaw is currently being abused in the wild. It didn’t go into detail, likely to give customers time to patch up their Apple devices.

BleepingComputer has noted that attacks against CVE-2022-22675 might only be targeted in nature. However,if you’re using any or all of the above Apple products we mentioned, it is still wise to apply updates as soon as you can.

Stay safe!

The post Update now! Apple patches zero-day vulnerability affecting Macs, Apple Watch, and Apple TV appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Tesla owners are no strangers to seeing reports of cars being tampered with outside of their control. Back in 2021, a zero-click exploit aided a drone in taking over the car’s entertainment system. In 2016, we had a brakes and doors issue. 2020 saw people rewriting key-fob firmware via Bluetooth. Andin January this year, a teen claimed he had managed to remotely hack into 25 Tesla vehicles.

This time, we have another Bluetooth key-fob issue making waves. Although there is a Tesla specific advisory, there are also advisories for this issue generally and a type of smart lock.

Bluetooth Low Energy and keyless entry systems

The researchers who discovered this issue are clear that it isn’t “just” a problem for Tesla. It’s more of a problem related to the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocol used by the keyless entry system. Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology which uses radio frequencies and allows you to share data. You can connect one device to another, interact with Bluetooth beacons, and much more. Bluetooth is a perfect fit for something as commonplace as keyless door entry.

As the name suggests, BLE is all about providing functionality through very low energy consumption. As BLE is only active for very short periods of time, it’s a much more efficient way to do things.

The relay attack in action

Researchers demonstrated how this compromise of the keyless system works in practice. Though light on details, Bloomberg mentions it is a relay attack. This is a fairly common method used by people in the car research realm to try and pop locks.

To help describe a relay attack, it’s common to first explain how a Man in the Middle (MitM) attack works:

In cybersecurity, a Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack happens when a threat actor manages to intercept and forward the traffic between two entities without either of them noticing. In addition, some MitM attacks alter the communication between parties, again without them realizing.

For relay attacks, think of two people (or one person with two devices) sliding their way into the device-based communication. Some of the diagrams I’ve seen explaining this attack can be a little confusing, but this video explanation is perfect:

As you can see, two people approach the car. One pulls the handles to trigger the car’s security system into sending out a message. “Are you the owner of this car, are your keys the correct keys for this vehicle?” The authentication challenge is beamed out into the void. The second person is standing by the house with a device.

People often leave their car keys close to the front door. As a result, the keys will be within range of the second person’s device. It takes the fob’s response and beams it back to the criminal by the car. The device in their hand relays the fob’s authentication confirmation to the car and the door unlocks. They then repeat this process a second time. This is to fool the car into thinking the keys are present, at which point they’re able to drive away.

A gear-shift in criminal perspective

Criminals are after maximum gain for minimum effort. They don’t want to attract attention from law enforcement. The sneakier they can be, the less commotion they cause, and the better it’s going to be for them in the long-term.

Think about how seamless a relay approach is to car theft. It’s quick, it’s easy, and it’s completely silent. Consider how much money a professional outfit pulling these car heists can generate. The alternative is messy break-ins, noise, rummaging for keys in a house full of screaming people and barking dogs. Not to mention a significantly increased chance of being caught. If you were a career criminal, which approach would you favour?

A problem which refuses to go away

Relay attacks on cars have been around for several years now. Stolen vehicles are the go-to example of relay attacks if you go looking for more information on the technique. Advice for avoiding relay attacks is widespread, from keeping keys away from the front door (which you should do anyway) to placing them in a signal-blocking bag.

For the Tesla specific attack, a relay device was placed “within roughly 15 yards” of the smartphone/key-fob, with the other plugged into a laptop close to the vehicle. You can see more information about the more general forms of attack here.

The article mentions that there’s no evidence of this Tesla tomfoolery having happened in the wild. Even so, relay attacks can and do take place. If your car operates a keyless system, take this latest report as a heads-up to ensure your vehicle is safe from attack no matter the make or model.

The post Car owners warned of another theft-enabling relay attack appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

More voices are being raised against the use of everyday technology repurposed to attack and stalk people. Most recently, it’s reported that Ohio has proposed a new bill in relation to electronic tagging devices.

The bill, aimed at making short work of a loophole allowing people with no stalking or domestic violence record to use tracking devices, is currently in the proposal stages. As PC Mag mentions, 19 states currently ban the use of trackers to aid stalking.

Dude, where’s my car?

Using tech to find missing items is nothing new. Back in the 80s, my dad had one of the new wave of tools used to find your lost keys. You put a small device on your keychain, and when they inevitably went missing, you whistled. The device, assuming it was nearby, would beep or whistle back. That is, it would if the range wasn’t awful and it frequently didn’t respond to your best whistle attempts.

Skip forward enough years, and we had similar concept but with Bluetooth and Radio Frequency. But the range on them isn’t great and so the use is limited.

Step up to the plate, tracker devices.

What is an AirTag?

There are many types of tracking device, but AirTags are unfortunately for Apple the one most closely associated with this form of stalking.

Find My, an app for Apple mobiles, is an incredibly slick way to keep track of almost any Apple product you can think of. Making your lost phone make a noise, offline finding, and sending the last location when battery is low are some of the fine-tune options available.

An AirTag is a small round device which plugs right into the Find My options. The idea is a supercharged version of ye olde key whistler. Misplace an item attached to an AirTag, and when you get close enough you’ll even have Precision Finding kicking in to guide to the lost item.

This is all incredibly helpful, especially if you’re good at misplacing things. Even better if something is stolen. Where it goes wrong is when people with bad intentions immediately figure out ways they can harass people with it.

A stalker’s life for me

Back in January, model Brooks Nader claimed someone placed an AirTag in her coat. Whoever was responsible used it to follow her around for several hours. She only became aware of what was happening because her phone alerted her to the tag’s presence.

However, this is an Apple-specific product, which means not all devices will be able to flag it. Android users are resorting to downloading standalone apps which can flush out unwanted AirTag stalkers. Meanwhile, the case numbers themselves are steadily increasing across multiple regions. Smart stalkers will place tags on items or in places victims won’t suspect. A tag under the car means victims may never even find out they’ve been stalked in the first place.

Apple pushes back on AirTag stalking

This isn’t great news for any company faced with a sudden wave of people abusing their devices. Apple is trying to lead the charge against these practices by making it harder for stalkers.

• Improving the accuracy of “unknown accessory detected” notices
• Adding support documents for people who believe they may be being stalked.
• Implementing notices which say “tracking without consent is a crime”

Advice for people worried about AirTag stalking

Apple’s support document lists two ways to discover unwanted tracking.

1. If you have an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, Find My will send a notification to your Apple device. This feature is available on iOS or iPadOS 14.5 or later. To receive alerts, make sure that you:
   Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services, and turn Location Services on.
   Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services. Turn Find My iPhone on.
   Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services. Turn Significant Locations on to be notified when you arrive at a significant location, such as your home.
   Go to Settings > Bluetooth, and turn Bluetooth on.
   Go to the Find My app, tap the Me tab, and turn Tracking Notifications on.
2. If you don’t have an iOS device or a smartphone, an AirTag that isn’t with its owner for a period of time will emit a sound when it’s moved. This type of notification isn’t supported with AirPods.

Any alert on your mobile device that a tracker is nearby allows you to make the tracker produce a noise via your phone. You can make this noise repeat as often as you want until the device is found.

Disabling the AirTag

If you can’t find the physical object, don’t worry. You can disable it, again using your phone. Apple’s advice:

To disable the AirTag, AirPods, or Find My network accessory and stop it from sharing its location, tap Instructions to Disable and follow the onscreen steps. After the AirTag, AirPods, or Find My network accessory is disabled, the owner can no longer get updates on its current location. You will also no longer receive any unwanted tracking alerts for this item.

Apple has been quite visible in both drawing attention to the problem and providing accessible and straightforward solutions to shutting unwanted tracking down. We can only hope that other companies whose trackers are being misused in this way are doing their part too.

The post AirTag stalking: What is it, and how can I avoid it? appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs:

• How to spot the signs of a virtual kidnap scam
• Virtual credit cards coming to Chrome: What you need to know
• Clearview AI banned from selling facial recognition data in the US
• Cyberattacks on SATCOM networks attributed to Russian threat actors
• F5 BIG-IP vulnerability is now being used to disable servers
• College closes down after ransomware attack
• Update now! Microsoft releases patches, including one for actively exploited zero-day
• Canon printer owners: Be careful of bogus driver download sites
• APT34 targets Jordan Government using new Saitama backdoor
• Client side scanning may cost more than it delivers
• “Chemical attack” email warnings deliver Jester Stealer malware
• Costa Rica continues defence against sustained Conti ransomware attacks
• Update now! F5 BIG-IP vulnerability being actively exploited
• Recovering from romance scams with Cindy Liebes: Lock and Code S03E10
• How to remove Google from your life
• A special browser designed for online banking. Good idea, or not so much?
• $600 a week to wrap your car? It’s a scam
• A scanning tool for open-sourced software packages? Yes, please!

Stay safe!

The post A week in security (May 9 – 15) appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

Researchers at Sucuri investigated a number of WordPress websites complaining about unwanted redirects and found websites that use fake CAPTCHA forms to get the visitor to accept web push notifications.

These websites are a new wave of a campaign that leverages many compromised WordPress sites.

CAPTCHA

CAPTCHA (“Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”) is one of the annoyances that we have learned to take for granted when we browse the Internet. Scientists developed CAPTCHA as a method to tell humans and bots apart so as to to keep bots from accessing sites or systems where they are not welcome.

Google bought and owns reCAPTCHA, which represents a CAPTCHA system expressly developed to reduce the needed amount of user interaction. The original version asked users to decipher hard to read text or match images. Version 2 required users to decipher text or match images if the analysis of cookies and canvas rendering suggested an automatic download of the page. Since version 3, reCAPTCHA doesn’t interrupt users, running automatically when users load pages or click buttons.

The basic version of a real reCAPTCHA the threat actors used as a template to create the fake ones looks like this:

The campaign

The fake CAPTCHA sites are part of a long lasting campaign responsible for injecting malicious scripts into compromised WordPress websites. This campaign leverages known vulnerabilities in WordPress themes and plugins and has impacted an enormous number of websites over the years.

The compromised websites all share a common issue. The threat actors injected malicious JavaScript within the affected website’s files and database. Attackers attempted to automatically infect any .js file with jQuery in the name, on a compromised website. They then injected obfuscated code when successful. This malicious JavaScript was appended under the current script or under the head of the page where it was fired on every page load, redirecting site visitors to the destination chosen by the threat actor.

The Malwarebytes Threat Intelligence Team tracked a rogue affiliate’s traffic which flowed through the same local[.]drakefollow[.]com subdomain that was mentioned in the Sucuri blog. The threat actor chose to promote a legitimate security product in this case, but might as well have led visitors to potentially unwanted programs (PUPs), adware, or tech support scams.

The fake CAPTCHA

At this point in the chain of redirections, the fake reCAPTCHA websites kick in. The fake reCAPTCHA sites are the final step towards duping the visitor. The unsuspecting visitor will land on a site that tries to trick them into accepting push notifications from the landing page’s domain.

Visitors think they need to click “Allow” to get past the CAPTCHA screen, when in fact they are giving permission to the domain to send them push notifications.

By design, push notifications work similarly across different operating systems and web browsers. They appear outside of the browser window just above the taskbar on the right hand side. This is misleading as they may seem to originate from the operating system. Knowing the difference between a web push notification and an alert that comes from the operating system or another program installed on the device is hard, and that makes it difficult for the unsuspecting user of an affected system to know what is going on.

As we reported in the past, adware, search hijackers, and PUP families have added push notifications as one of their attack vectors. Sucuri warns that it is also one of the most common ways attackers display “tech support” scams, where users are told their computer is infected or slow and they should call a toll-free number to fix the problem.

Removal and mitigation

Knowing that these fake reCAPTCHA sites exist and being able to spot the difference with a real one is your best protection. Also, many security programs, including Malwarebytes, will block access to the campaign’s domains.

If your system shows you push notifications, you can find detailed instructions on how to disable and remove permissions for browser push notifications in our article: Browser push notifications: a feature asking to be abused.

Website owners can use Sucuri’s free remote website scanner to detect the malware.

Stay safe, everyone!

Special thanks to the Malwarebytes Threat Intelligence Team for their contribution and the screenshot

The post Fake reCAPTCHA forms dupe users via compromised WordPress sites appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

2021 saw a massive surge in detections of malware, adware, and Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs). It didn’t matter what the computers were used for or what operating system they ran—across business and home computers, on Windows and on Mac, detections went up, enormously.

Detections of malware on Windows business machines were 143% higher in 2021 than in 2020, and 65% higher on consumer machines.

Detections of malware, adware, and PUPs on macOS increased almost 220%.

The background to this extraordinary jump in detections is the coronavirus pandemic, so we call this surge in detections the “Covid bounce”.

The Covid bounce

In 2020, the recently-discovered novel coronavirus, and the restrictions put in place to slow its progress, caused trillions of dollars of lost economic activity and a mass migration of knowledge workers from offices to homes.

Almost all forms of business suffered—even illegal ones like cybercrime. Crooks were just as likely to get COVID-19 as anyone else, and the targets they preyed upon changed beyond recognition.

Many businesses wound down or folded, and those that didn’t had to upend their IT infrastructure overnight to support working from home. How people worked, where they worked, the tools they used, and the things they cared about were all in flux.

No wonder then, that in 2020, malware detections on Windows business machines fell 24%.

The effect was not spread evenly across all types of malware though. Detections of Emotet and TrickBot collapsed by 89% and 69% respectively, leading some to speculate that while these highly sophisticated forms of malware were extremely effective at permeating corporate networks they may be poorly adapted to exploit the work-from-home environment.

Meanwhile, detections of hacking tools, information stealers, and other malware that could help criminals better understand the transformation in their victims’ environments, increased considerably.

In 2021, as restrictions lifted gradually around the world, and as organisations and the criminals preying on them adapted to remote and hybrid work, detection numbers climbed precipitously.

And they didn’t simply return to the pre-Covid status quo, they soared past 2019’s numbers. In 2021, the detection numbers for business threats were 85% higher than in 2019, and consumer threat detections were 47% higher.

Cryptocurrency values soared in 2021 and, to nobody’s surprise, detections of malware that mines cryptocurrencies increased more than 300 precent.

Adware, spyware, and worms all displayed an enormous bounce back in 2021, climbing 200%, and detections of email threats showed a considerable “Covid bounce” too. But while the old guard of Emotet and TrickBot remained, they were not the presence of old as several new pretenders jostled for position.

It is impossible to say why detections bounced back so alarmingly last year, but the plain fact is that the world now is not the world of 2019. Events like the coronavirus pandemic have far-reaching effects that go far beyond the immediate, obvious and tragic health consequences, affecting all walks of life, even the security of your servers, laptops, and remote workers.

The pandemic accelerated the transition from a bricks-and-mortar to online existence, and for many businesses and services there is no going back.

After a period of adjustment and uncertainty in 2020, cybercrime seems to have emerged supremely well adapted to this new reality.

You can learn more about the Covid bounce and how it changed the outlook for cyberthreats into 2022 and beyond in the Malwarebytes 2022 Threat Review.

The post How COVID-19 fuelled a surge in malware appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

When selecting the right cybersecurity vendor to protect their operations, small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) can lean on several third-party research organizations that analyze which cybersecurity products can best prevent, detect, and clean up various types of cyberattacks today.

But these tests can sometimes assume a level of end-user complexity—and funding and staffing—that the average SMB might lack. Without a full-time security team, or even a single full-time internal IT hire, an SMB could unwittingly purchase a cybersecurity product that, while effective, requires a level of expertise they simply do not have.

This is where one third-party research team, in particular, can help.

MRG-Effitas, which produces quarterly reports about cybersecurity products that publicly participate in evaluations, focuses its analyses on “real world” malware attacks and detection capabilities. Not only do the researchers test malware samples that are currently infecting endpoints across the world, but the researchers also stress the importance of simple, effective notifications that will help the average user respond to any detected cyberthreat.

“Simulating normal user behaviour means that we pay special attention to all alerts given by security applications,” wrote the researchers in their most recent quarterly report for their program, the “360° Assessment & Certification.”

The 360° Assessment & Certification combines several tests that are then grouped into four separate certifications. Based on how a cybersecurity product performed in certain tests, that product will either earn a certificate or not. This almost-binary representation of a product’s performance is simple and effective, and it can help to quickly inform an SMB about whether a certain product is right for their company.

At the core of the MRG-Effitas certification process—which tests how products respond to known exploits, ransomware, botnets, adware, and more—is the user.

“A pass is given only when alerts are straightforward, and clearly suggest that the malicious action should be blocked,” the report said. “With this in mind, it is very important to note that the best choice for an average user is to keep things as simple as possible and not to overwhelm them with cryptic pop-ups, alerts or questions.”

Testing and certification

The 360° Assessment & Certification by MRG-Effitas involves the following nine rounds of testing:

• In the Wild/Full Spectrum Test
• PUA/Adware Test
• Exploit/Fileless Test
• Real Botnet Test
• Banking Simulator Test
• Ransomware Simulator Test
• False Positive Ransomware Test
• False Positive Test
• Performance Test

Each test has a specific purpose, from testing how cybersecurity products respond to an end-user visiting a malicious URL that delivers malware, to the detection of non-malicious but meddlesome applications such as adware, to even testing how a product responds to live ransomware samples observed in real world applications, and to simulated ransomware samples developed by MRG-Effitas. Importantly, MRG-Effitas also tests the performance load of each cybersecurity product, analyzing how much time it takes to perform certain tasks on devices that have the cybersecurity product installed.

While MRG-Effitas performs testing in the above nine categories, it only awards certificates in four categories: The 360° Assessment, the 360° Exploit Degree, the 360° Online Banking Degree, and the 360° Ransomware Degree.

For the 360° Assessment, MRG-Effitas assigns two levels of certification—Level 1 and Level 2—depending on how successfully a cybersecurity product detected the cyberthreats that were launched at it during testing. A vendor only receives Level 1 certification if it detected all threats on “first exposure or via behaviour protection,” the report said, and it passed the Real Botnet Test.

The malware load used during the 360° Assessment is significant. In the most recent round, it involved 360 “In The Wild” samples that included: “20 trojans, 54 backdoors, 50 financial malware samples, 53 ransomware, 49 spyware, 84 malicious documents, [and] 50 malicious script files.”

Just four products publicly received a Level 1 certification in the recent 360° Assessment: Malwarebytes Endpoint Protection, Bitdefender Endpoint Security, Microsoft Windows Defender, and Symantec Endpoint Protection.

A similar test deploys 50 financial malware samples against the detection and protection capabilities of the cybersecurity products, along with simulated banking malware. Five products publicly received the 360° Online Banking Certification: Malwarebytes Endpoint Protection, Avira Antivirus Pro, Bitdefender Endpoint Security, ESET Endpoint Security, and Symantec Endpoint Protection.

Ransomware simulations

In just the past decade, ransomware has evolved tremendously. Developers of the infamous family of malware have gone from asking for measly sums of money from individuals to creating entire business models in which they license out their ransomware tool to other threat actors. When those threat actors successfully hit a business—which they could have purchased access to from other threat actors—the original ransomware developers take a cut of whatever eventual payment is made. To make matters worse, threat actors have also begun deploying ransomware that not only encrypts a company’s files, but it also first exfiltrates any sensitive data, which the threat actors then use as a second point of leverage: Pay up or your data will be published for everyone to see.

The researchers at MRG-Effitas, recognizing this rapid pace of ransomware evolution, have, for years, tested cybersecurity products against ransomware samples developed in-house that could represent where ransomware development is headed in just months or years.

In the most recent 360° Assessment & Certification, MRG-Effitas deployed 53 ransomware samples against the cybersecurity products, and an additional four simulated ransomware samples. To achieve the 360° Ransomware Certification, a product must have protected a device from the 53 ransomware samples and 4 simulated ransomware simulated samples, and it must have passed the false positive ransomware test.

In the most recent round of testing, all nine publicly-evaluated cybersecurity products achieved ransomware certification.

Performance

Understanding whether a cybersecurity product works well is, obviously, important. But of similar importance to SMBs is understanding what impact a cybersecurity product will have on a suite of endpoints. Without large budgets that could allow for constantly refreshed, new devices to be purchased, SMBs should consider how much a cybersecurity product could slow down their organizations’ devices.

Thankfully, MRG-Effitas analyzes cybersecurity products based on their impact on performing simple operations, like downloading a file, opening a Microsoft Office program, or opening a website. The analysis also measures the time spent performing a security software update and the CPU usage during the update process.

Unlike the certificates offered by MRG-Effitas for other categories, there is no certificate or “pass/fail” result when testing performance. Instead, SMBs can look at the performance measurements for each product in the latest 360° Assessment & Certification.

Less “interpretation,” quicker answers

The simplicity of MRG-Effitas’ 360° Assessment & Certification gives SMBs a quick guide into what cybersecurity products could be the right fit for them. Without having to dive into countless interpretive reports from each cybersecurity vendor, SMBs can instead look at the most recent 360° Assessment & Certification and ask themselves: Which of these products received certification and which did not?

Knowing that MRG-Effitas hews its testing ideology to the user—only offering certifications for products that clearly notify and warn users about how to respond to a threat—SMBs can be sure that whatever tool they choose will, at the very least, be easy to use on their end.

The post Why MRG-Effitas matters to SMBs appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.

This blog post was authored by Hossein Jazi and Jérôme Segura

Populations around the world—and in Europe in particular—are following the crisis in Ukraine very closely, and with events unfolding on a daily basis, people are hungry for information.

Although all countries have reasons to be concerned, the situation is Germany is more complicated than most. It is one of the few European countries to have received criticism for its attitude to the Ukraine-Russia conflict, as it struggles to end its reliance on Russian energy, and Moscow recently imposed sanctions on Gazprom Germania, further increasing economic tensions.

This week our analysts discovered a new campaign that plays on these concerns by trying to lure Germans with a promise of updates on the current threat situation in Ukraine. The downloaded document is in fact decoy for a Remote Access Trojan (RAT) capable of stealing data and executing other malicious commands on a victim’s computer.

Decoy site lures victims with Ukraine situation

Threat actors registered an expired German domain name at collaboration-bw[.]de that was formally used as a collaboration platform to develop new ideas for the Baden-Württemberg state.

The threat actors used the domain to host a website that looked like the official Baden-Württemberg website, baden-wuerttemberg.de.

With this copycat, the attackers created the perfect placeholder for the lure they wanted their victims to download: A file tantalising called 2022-Q2-Bedrohungslage-Ukraine (threat situation in Ukraine for Q2), offered via a prominent blue download button.

An English translation of the page reads:

Important, current threat situation regarding the Ukraine crisis

On this website you will always find the most important information and tips for dealing with the current threat posed by the Ukraine crisis. Please download the document now and read through the current information. The document is constantly updated and is up to date. Our suggested tips can be practically implemented in everyday work and you should already implement them today. Thanks for your support.

File analysis

The archive file called 2022-Q2-Bedrohungslage-Ukraine contains a file named 2022-Q2-Bedrohungslage-Ukraine.chm. The CHM format is Microsoft’s HTML help file format, which consists of a number of compiled HTML files.

Victims will get a fake error message when they open up that file, while PowerShell quietly runs a Base64 command.

After de-obfuscating the command we can see it is designed to execute a script downloaded from the fake Baden-Württemberg website, using Invoke-Expression (IEX).

The downloaded script creates a folder called SecuriyHealthService in the current user directory and drops two files into it: MonitorHealth.cmd and a script called Status.txt. The .cmd file is very simple and just executes Status.txt through PowerShell.

Finally, the downloaded script makes MonitorHealth.cmd persistent by creating a scheduled task that will execute it each day at a specific time.

PowerShell RAT (Status.txt)

Status.txt is a RAT written in PowerShell. It starts its activities by collecting some information about the victim’s computer, such as the current username and working directory, and the computer’s hostname. It also builds a unique id for the victim, the clientid.

This data is exfiltrated as a JSON data structure sent to the server via a POST request:

$json = '{
  "type": "newclient",
  "result": "",
  "pwd": "' + $pwd_b64 + '",
  "cuser": "' + $cuser + '",
  "hostname": "' + $hname + '",
  "clientid": "' + $clientid + '"
}';

$headers = @{'X-Request-ID' = $strhash;}

However, before executing this requests the script will first bypass the Windows Antimalware Scan Interface (AMSI) using an AES-encrypted function called bypass. It is decrypted using a generated key and IV before execution.

This RAT has the following capabilities:

• Download (type: D0WNl04D): Download files from server
• Upload (type: UPL04D): Upload file to the server
• LoadPS1 (type: L04DPS1): Load and execute a PowerShell script
• Command (type: C0MM4ND): Execute a specific command

German command and control server

The attack was thoughtfully carried out—even ensuring that the stolen data was sent to a German domain name, kleinm[.]de, to avoid suspicion.

It is not easy to attribute this activity to a specific actor, and there are no solid indicators to support attribution. Based on motivation alone, we hypothesise that a Russian threat actor could be targeting German users, but without clear connections in infrastructure or similarities to known TTPs, such attribution is weak.

The Malwarebytes Threat Intelligence team continues to monitor attacks taking advantage of the war in Ukraine while ensuring our customers are protected.

Indicators of Compromise (IOCs)

Phishing site

collaboration-bw[.]de/bedrohung-ukr.html

Lure

2022-Q2-Bedrohungslage-Ukraine.zip
2430f68285120686233569e51e2147914dc87f82c7dbdf07fe0c34dbb1aca77c
2022-Q2-Bedrohungslage-Ukraine.chm
80bad7e0d5a5d2782674bb8334dcca03534aa831c37aebb5962da1cd1bec4130

Status.txt
a5d8beaa832832576ca97809be4eee9441eb6907752a7e1f9a390b29bbb9fe1f

MonitorHealth.cmd
fc71522a4125ca4bdc5e5deca4a6498e7f2da4408614c2e1284c3ae8c083a5fd

C2

kleinm[.]de

MITRE ATT&CK

The post Custom PowerShell RAT targets Germans seeking information about the Ukraine crisis appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.